Quote Originally Posted by Kalise View Post
... [T]he fact remains that due to how the FF universes are unique, it's not ALWAYS going to be the case that things like lore will be copied 100% from things that are ported nearly 100% accurately from other games.
If they weren't literal carbon copies, from having the same culture to coming from the same area of the same geographic region... but there's absolutely nothing imaginative about XIV's Viera. Nothing. Besides being on Hydaelyn, they are literally the exact same Viera from XII. That their lore would be the same is... expected.

Quote Originally Posted by Kalise View Post
However, I do kind of wish that they had doubled down on making one full race with both genders now and saved the other race to add later with both genders (Such as with 6.0 release). That way they not only avoid tantrums like happened here with genderlocking, but also extend the hype train across 2 expansions where they get to show off their brand new race.
The reason they went the split route they did was because the work necessary to introduce a race doesn't stay the same - it's incrementally more taxing to introduce a new race as the game goes on due to having to make sure every piece of gear works properly with their model, which takes a lot of time (re: money) due to the high graphical quality of the game. That's why this is the last time they intend to introduce new races.

Sure, they could choose not to do [Hrothgar males / Viera females] now and just do a full [Viera / Hrothgar] suite... but if they did that, there's a far lesser chance of ever getting [Hrothgar / Viera]. It takes more resources to introduce a new race the further we go into the game, not the same amount it took for a previous one.

Considering that, overwhelming fan demand for the Viera, and their own desire to have some creative control over the game, I can't really fault the devs for taking the direction they did... even though I still don't agree with sex-exclusive races. Or the hissy fits people threw in response. (You can't control everything, but you can control how you react; the fact so many chose to throw temper tantrums over it is... disappointing.)